Campbell County sheriff’s officials say a 15-year-old boy fatally shot a man who was trying to abduct a woman in Wright.

The shooting happened Wednesday night.

Sheriff’s officials said Friday they had responded to reports of an attempted abduction at a home in Wright. They arrived to find 48-year-old Sammy Michael Fears, of Casper, wounded in the driveway. Fears died on the way to the hospital.

It’s not clear how the teen became involved. Sheriff’s Cpl. Gary Sams says the teenage shooter had no family relationship to either Fears or the woman.

He says Fears and the woman had a history of domestic violence going back a few years.

We can only assume that the teen was probably a neighbor who heard and saw the attempted abduction going down, and then retrieved a firearm from his home. I hope the young man here gets any counseling he needs for Post Traumatic Stress Injury, and truly grasps that he likely saved a life here, even as he was compelled by circumstances to fire a shot that took a life.

While it is entirely a hunch, there have been enough of these cases over the years to suspect that this would have likely ended up a murder/suicide if he had not intervened.